My Home Hero

 My Home Hero (マイホームヒーロー) is a 12 episode crime drama based on the manga of the same name by Yamakawa Naoki and Asaki Masashi .  The anime originally aired during the Spring of 2023.

    What would you do if your only child was in an abusive relationship that could very well end in her murder?  Tosu Tetsuo, when faced with that very scenario, did what ever he could to protect her and the rest of his family.  He becomes concerned when his daughter Reika arrives for a lunch date with black eyes.  Her avoidance of the situation causes the mild mannered salaryman concern and he heads over to her apartment to talk with her.  He inadvertently encounters her boyfriend, a flamboyant braggart named Nobuto.  He overhears him discussing his abuse with a group of friends but before Tetsuo can learn more a man approaches him.  The man pretends to be scouting for call girl clients but when he gets Testuo in a secluded area he beats and strips him.  The man is looking out for the abuser and takes a photo of Testsuo and his ID for safe keeping, hoping all it takes is a warning to the worried father to keep his nose out of things.

    After spending the night recovering in an internet cafe Tetsuo returns to his daughters apartment, to try and gather clues about her boyfriend.  Before he can formulate a plan, the man enters, oblivious to the scene, belligerently chatting on his cell, visibly intoxicated.   Testuo hides in a closet, overhearing the conversation and becomes convinced that the man will kill Reika once hes been able to extort money from her.  In a moment of panic he sees an opportunity and fatally strikes the larger man with a rice cooker.  At that moment his wife enters the apartment, finding her husband trying to settle his nerves, bloody rice cooker still in his hands.  He does his best to explain the situation to her and she agrees to help him to hide the crime, unwilling to lose the love of her life over protecting their daughter.  Little to either of them understand the difficult task ahead of them.  Nobuto is the son of a man who holds an important position with a dangerous crime syndicate.  He will search the ends of the Earth to find his son and enact any level of retribution he wants.  Testuo, with the help of his wife, must use his lifetime of mystery novel reading to aid him in disposing of the body and preventing the crime from being connected to him.

    I was never able to get past season one of Breaking Bad.  The continuously building tension of a situation spiraling more and more out of the control of the main characters got incredibly exhausting to endure.  My Home Hero is not unlike Breaking Bad in that regard.  The entire plot is 'will Tetsuo be able to get away with this one murder'.  Almost immediately that situation becomes impossible as the criminal syndicate his victim is a part of knows full well that he walked into Tetsuo's daughters apartment and never left.  The person Nobuto was on the phone with before Tetsuo killed him was a man named Kyoichi, who was nearby.  Kyoichi, sensing something wasn't right with the situation, begins to investigate the apartment.  He fully suspects Reika's unassuming father knows what happened to the disliked gang member and wants to use him as a stepping stone to more authority in the syndicate.  The course of the anime roughly follows a week in time as Tetsuo is quickly rounded up by Kyoichi and is given a week's deadline to either be blamed for the murder or find the lost man.  Testuo spends all of his time, being heavily monitored by the gang, working out ways to cover up any last traces of the crime and to manufacture evidence that would exonerate him in any way possible.  Every moment of his life is filled with uncertainty and terror as the malicious criminals he becomes surrounded by offer little sympathy for his situation.

    Aside from the constant stress of the events that transpire from beginning to end leasing to mental fatigue, there are numerous points through out the story where Testuo's successes are aided by deus ex machina.  The story tries hard to remain within the realm of realism but there are a few points where that becomes absurd.  The weakest thing in the story over all is how the audience is supposed to accept Testuo's cunning and knowledge come from his avid interest in crime mystery novels.  Using this knowledge he's able to craft masterful plans to further his artificial innocence.  Aside from the idea that plot points used in fiction are largely realistic and beneficial in Testuo's situation are hard to believe, the idea that he is able to remain as level headed his is being chocked up to his carer as a salesman is absurd.  Its crazy that he has some of the knowledge he does and the means to utilize it in a real world situation.  That and there are a few key moments where he is able to 'perfectly' seize on an opportunity for maximum effect.  There is way too much in the way of plot armor to make the story as satisfying as it could be.  But thats not to say it isn't a finely crafted story with a lot of twists and turns.  It dips its toes into the morality of the characters situations and shows them coming face to face with the reality of whats going on, but that is largely swept away in favor of the continually complicated problems.  Death Note was easier to digest due to the super natural nature of the story, but My Home Hero tries really hard to make us think it exists in the real world that it ignores the unrealistic ways some of the problems resolve.  That said...I may have to pick up the manga as there appears to be a lot more story than was done in the anime...but we shall see.

 

The anime is available in dub and sub format on Crunchyroll.